On Mar 30, 2005, at 7:46 PM, Stephen Vincent wrote:

> Thanks, Mark, for the lovely account.
>
> Most poets have at least one or two Creeley stories.
> There is the person.

Well,I been reading around the man's work today & tonight feel like  
talking about good times shared. So here's one of my Creeley stories --

The company of Robert Creeley, in his poems or around a table, was (is,  
remains!) a place of major pleasure and learning. A word he liked:  
"company" -- from "con pan" (with bread), to break bread with someone,  
to break it to share & eat in company. One late summer night in Paris  
in 1982 a jolly company of us went to a restaurant -- a mediterranean  
fish place -- after some literary event. We were lit up already, and  
wine flowed as we prepared to order. Bob asked me what I was eating & I  
told him that the place was famous for an odd & dangerous dish you  
couldn't find elsewhere: they served an Atlantic fish that had a poison  
bone still in, so you had to be very careful when eating it -- I had  
never tried it, but I was going to tonight. Bob decided to come along  
for the ride, and ordered the same. It took time to, more bottles were  
emptied, hors d'oeuvres eaten, & when the fish finally came, Bob had  
forgotten the warning & hungry as he was, laid into it as if it were  
fishfingers -- & got the poison bone stuck in the gullet with the first  
fork full. At first we tried to prey it lose & get it down with bread,  
then he tried to bring it up with his finger, then bread again, then  
the owner asked if she should call an ambulance -- Bob waved her off,  
we went back to bread and brandy, the bone had become the center of the  
party -- and finally, after a teary nail-biting owner asked us again if  
she shouldn't better call an ambulance, Bob gave her a resounding NO --  
so resounding that the bone flew out! We paid up & repaired to a less  
dangerous café for some Armangnac, & the night carried on as it does in  
Paris and carried us along with it. Next day I felt slightly bad for  
having given Bob such a scare (though I and the rest of the company  
were probably more scared than Bob had been), & wrote the following  
poem, an _apologia mea_ I sent him later, but never published, as far  
as I remember -- here it is tonight, on the day of Van Gogh's birth &  
Robert Creeley's death. -- Pierre


 THE GREATER OR LESSER WEEVER

 
                                                for Robert Creeley

 
            “they are really waiting for             shrimp though you  
may not             appreciate that”

  

should have known better should have checked the facts before the  
occasion:
first acquaintance can be agonizing
barefoot on a sandy beach in Cornwall or dining with friends in the  
quartier latin
you feel the most excruciating pain.
buried in sand right up to the eyes the spines of the first dorsal  
sticking up through sand and
should have known: grooves along those spines conduct poison.

"Even the strongest and most knowledgeable of fishermen are sometimes  
caught as they walk through the shallow waters of that coast, and can  
be laid up for a fortnight'.

didn't check the facts, dug the names:


"les vives" thought of long live like le roi, of
lively & to live
 
thought of
arête vive which is not
bad French for stop living but
means live
bones, vif as in
our quick,
and/or
involves that
straigthness in
Greek philosophy we
could dispute
over for days
on end, but not
in this restaurant where I
 
was wrong again, the names “in both
French & English derive from Old French
wivre”

meaning viper.

Well, they do broil rattlers in New Mexico, don’t they?

In England, 1747, Hannah Glass proposed:
“Gut them & wash them clean, dry them with a clean cloth, flour them,  
then broil them, & have melted butter in a Cup.”
Them & them & them, who wants to call them by their name,

vipers

 ‘a fine Fish cut as fine as Soal but you must take Care not to hurt  
yourself with the two Bones in the Head."

And there we were, two bone-heads
for a change
unable to cope with
a menu as
dangerous as

any poem.

 
                                                                       l 
ondon august 82


=================================================
"Lyric poetry has to be exorbitant or not at all."  -- Gottfried Benn
=================================================
For updates on readings, etc. check my  current events page:
             http://albany.edu/~joris/CurrentEvents.html
=================================================
Pierre Joris
244 Elm Street	
Albany NY 12202 	
h: 518 426 0433 	
c: 518 225 7123                                                 	
o: 518 442 40 85                                                        	
email: [log in to unmask]
http://www.albany.edu/~joris/
=================================================